- Cincinnati’s Downtown Ambassadors “Work To Keep The City Streets Safe.” For Fox19, Brenda Ordonez reports on the city’s safety ambassador team, outfitted in highly-visible bright yellow shirts who “offer another set of eyes and ears in the community… who work to keep the city streets clean and people safe.” The team of 80 professionals patrols downtown, provides “safety escorts, so you can call our ambassadors, and they’ll walk you to your office or car… engage with people who are downtown, giving people directions… [and the team also] has police radios, so if our ambassador sees something that’s above what they should be handling, they’ll radio CPD and ask an officer to take care of the incident.” Ortiz reported that the service is “super simple to access—let’s say you’re headed to tonight’s Reds game, or perhaps your favorite restaurant on Vine, you’re walking down the street and feeling unsafe, or perhaps you’re lost, you call a hotline, it’s a free service, and within minutes a Safety Ambassador is there to help.”
City leaders said they are surging the staffing during the summer to help keep the bustling downtown streets safer—‘Every street corner, every side street everywhere from Findlay, all the way down to The Banks and the side streets… you’re going to see us no matter what.” - In Iowa, “Downtown Ambassadors Bring Powerful Impact To Sioux Falls Streets.” For Pigeon605, Jodi Schwan reports on Sioux Falls successful Safety Ambassador team, “a shared-services model that saves everyone money, allowing property owners, businesses and the city to pool resources for critical core services that no single entity could provide alone.” The ambassador team, outfitted in bright red shirts, patrols downtown Sioux Falls from 7AM to 7PM daily, assisting businesses, downtown visitors, and “helping [homeless] who are having problems… we call somebody to find out what they need, and we have the contacts to make that happen… [and] along the way, we’re offering greetings to everyone we see.” Just last year, the team had “6,000 direct interactions with the unhoused population… 600 welfare checks, providing immediate response to individuals in crisis and connecting them with EMTs or other services as needed, [and] 1,400-plus police calls prevented in summer through effective de-escalation, reducing strain on law enforcement while ensuring issues are handled with care.”
Related: To gauge public support for Safety Ambassador teams as part of a city’s public safety infrastructure, Safer Cities recently conducted a national survey of 2,503 registered voters and found that 78% of voters say Safety Ambassadors serve an “important” public safety function, allowing law enforcement to focus on serious crimes (full language of messages here).
